face from time to time, as if to make it smoother than
it was already, though it was shaved with peculiar care and formed and
colored like a warm mask; meanwhile draping the front of his rich blue
toga, which he wore in the fashion of a Roman senator, into fresh folds.

But when Pontius showed him, at the end of the rooms destined for the
Emperor, the last of the statues to be restored, and which needed a new
grin, Papias said decisively:

"It cannot be done."

"That is a rash verdict," replied the architect. "Do you not know
the proverb, which, being such a good one, is said to have been first
uttered by more than one sage: 'That it shows more ill-judgment to
pronounce a thing impossible than to boast that we can achieve a task
however much it may seem to transcend our powers.'"

Papias smiled and looked down at his gold-embroidered shoes as he said:

"It is more difficult to us sculptors to imagine ourselves waging
Titanic warfare against the impossible, than it is to you who work with
enormous masses. I do not yet see the means which would give me courage
to begin the attack."

"I will tell you," replied Pontius quickly and decidedly. "On your
side good-will, plenty of assistants and night-watchers; on ours, the
Caesar's approval and plenty of gold."

After this the transaction came to a prompt and favorable issue, and the
architect could but express his entire approbation, in most cases, of
the sculptor's judicious and well-considered suggestions.

"Now I must go home," concluded Papias. "My assistants will proceed at
once with the necessary preparations. The work must be carried on behind
screens, so that no one may disturb us or hinder us with remarks."

Half an hour later a scaffolding was already erected in the middle of
the hall where the Urania was to stand.

It was concealed from; public gaze by thick linen stretched on tall
wooden frames, and behind these screens Pollux was busied in framing
a small model in wax, while his master had returned home to make
arrangements for the labors of the following day.

It wanted only an hour of midnight, and still the supper sent to the
palace for the architect by the prefect remained untouched. Pontius was
hungry enough, but before attacking the meal that a slave had set out on
a marble table--the roast meat which looked so inviting, the orange-red
crayfish, the golden-brown pasty and the many-hued fruits--he conceived
it his duty to inspect the rooms to be r